The long legs of the lawWhy a mayor in Lebanon has dressed policewomen in hot pants

THE mayor of Broumana, Pierre Achkar, has a problem. Rich tourists from the Gulf, who spend big and stay long, no longer holiday in his mountain town. The mayor wants to entice tourists from the West to plug the gap, but Lebanon’s reputation for violence and instability keeps them away, he says. His solution: to hire young women as police officers and dress them up in black hot pants.

“People in the West don’t visit Lebanon because they think it’s a country of Islamic extremism,” explains Mr Achkar. “We want to show that we have the same way of life as the West. You wear shorts and we wear shorts. We have democracy. Our women are free.” The mayor’s stunt has caused a stir and split opinion. Some are pleased, but others say it exposes the young women to sexual harassment, or worry that they will distract drivers and cause road accidents. The mayor is undaunted. “Why would we hire ugly girls?” he asks.

The new hires direct traffic rather unconvincingly along the town’s restaurant-lined thoroughfare. Locals say they have done little to ease congestion. But the town’s police chief, who likens them to flowers, says his female subordinates have soothed motorists. Men are more likely to wear their seat belts and drive cautiously when told to do so by a pretty woman, he says. Chloe Khalife, a newly badged 19-year-old, says she is an example of Lebanon’s open society.

Feminists disagree. Until recently, rapists could marry their victims to escape punishment. Some still can if the girl is aged 15-17. Religious courts, which rule on divorce and child custody, discriminate against women and make it difficult for them to leave violent husbands. Some allow girls as young as nine to marry. Women cannot pass on their nationality to their children. Sexual harassment is not a crime. “It’s a cheap PR exercise that only serves as a reminder of how far from equality, rights and respect we really are,” says Lina Abirafeh, director of the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World.

The Ministry of Tourism has marketed the country using skimpily dressed women before. It took out an advert in Playboy magazine, before the civil war erupted in 1975, showing a bikini-clad woman and promising tourists their own “Arabian Nights fantasy”. Another campaign in 2011 featured a man hypnotised by memories of Lebanese women in bikinis. That video drew similar howls of disapproval.

Lebanon’s tourism industry, a mainstay of the struggling economy, badly needs a boost. The war next door in Syria, political turmoil, terrorism and anger at Iran’s rising influence in the country mean fewer tourists are coming. Hot pants will not bring them back.

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline "The long legs of the law"